Apple Stock steve jobs

The revolution that Steve Jobs unleashed in consumer technology also generated astounding wealth for Apple Inc. investors.
For a time last summer Apple had surpassed Exxon for the crown.
Steve Jobs | 1955-2011
After adjusting for stock splits, an investor who paid $2,200 to buy 100 shares of Apple at its IPO price of $22 in December 1980 today would have 800 shares worth a total of $302,600.
Some states, including Massachusetts, labeled Apple "too risky" to pitch to investors even though the company was profitable.
As excitement rose over the fledgling personal computer industry, Apple shares jumped 185% from their IPO price by mid-1983. Apple stock rocketed in 1998 and 1999, then crashed in 2000 as the tech bubble imploded.

Earnings rose from $1.79 a share to $7.79 a share in the same period.

Apple's fans say that the high nominal price of the shares, at nearly $380 each, unfairly creates an image of a bubble. At about $380 a share, Apple stock has a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.6 based on analysts' 2011 earnings estimate. Some analysts believe that Apple stock has been held back, relative to earnings, by doubts about the firm's long-term growth prospects after Jobs.

News of Steve Jobs's death drove the Apple share price down more than 5% in Frankfurt on Thursday morning.

Apple shares are now trading 3.5% lower at €273, after hitting a low of €270 in Frankfurt. The shares are not traded in London. Apple's stock price has risen more than 9,000% since Jobs returned in 1997. For Apple stockholders, Mr Job's legacy is worth $351 billion - that is the present market value of Apple shares which shows that the company founder was not only a technology visionary, but also a financial genius.

In 2000, Apple stock's market value stood at $5 billion, which Mr Jobs grew 70-fold to make it the world's most valuable publicly traded company in the world briefly, before returning the title to Exxon Mobil.

At Wednesday's price of $378.25 each, Apple's 928 million outstanding shares are worth more than the combined share values of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, DirecTV, Dell and Nokia.
Steve Jobs Death: Microsoft's Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer Celebrate Their Greatest Foe
That includes holders of mutual fund shares of Growth Fund of America, Fidelity Contrafund and Vanguard 500 Index fund, which have invested in Apple stocks.

Prior to Mr Jobs's Wednesday death, analysts estimated Apple would earn $32.83 a share in fiscal 2012, which would represent a gain of 18 per cent from 2011 results.